I can see now that the history of the 19th and 20th centuries from about 1860 until 1973 or so was the history of powerful national states. Democracy--spread first by the union victory in the Civil War, a powerful example to the major European states, and then again by the outcome of the Civil War--became the dominant form of government. Industrialization, meanwhile, generated unprecedented wealth, which politics placed largely at the disposition of governments. Conscription allowed governments to make almost unlimited claims on their manpower and put huge armies into the field, while industrialization gave those armies unprecedented firepower. Meanwhile, relatively conservative social mores--reinforced by religious observance--held societies together. Even minorities usually managed to move forward within this framework, with the obvious exception, in the mid-twentieth century, of the Jews of Europe, all of whose progress was reversed, with fatal consequences.
In all the major western countries the post-Second World War generation was the most favored generation in the history of the world. We grew up in rapidly expanding economies, with access to relatively cheap higher education. While many of us in many countries remained subject to conscription, we never fought any wars remotely on the scale of the two global conflicts of 1914-45. And we were allowed to develop our own ideas in a time of relaxing social mores and declining religious observance. The great Atlantic youth revolt of the late 1960s had different causes in different places. In Europe the postwar generation was probably revolting against their parents' collaboration with totalitarianism, while in the United States we revolted against the tragic Vietnam War. In both cases, however, the revolt turned against some of the fundamental assumptions of the last 100 years, starting with the young male's obligation to go to war whenever his government called upon him. Then, within academia, the revolt turned against intellectual authority of all kinds, increasingly labeled as a means by which certain classes, genders and races oppressed each other. And on both sides of the Atlantic, educated, relatively wealthy elites rejected parts of traditional morality and increasingly assumed that they must know what was best for everyone. That idea took root not only in the academy but also in government bureaucracies at local, provincial, national and international levels.
Economies also changed. The era of the two world wars and their aftermath was very destructive and cost many millions of lives, but it also increased economic equality. Inflation and high taxes significantly reduced great fortunes, while organized labor made impressive gains. Many governments,. in different ways, began trying to plan their economies. Those trends reversed themselves in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the advent of the Thatcher and Reagan regimes in Britain and the United States and the earlier elimination of stable exchange rates among the great powers. Financial deregulation followed in the 1990s, and trade barriers--already substantially reduced among the advanced nations--also came down in trade with the rest of the world. Deindustrialization resulted, especially in the United States and Britain, and the economic progress of the working class came to a halt. While some governments still played lip service to the socialist and New Deal traditions of the middle of the century, policy no longer reflected them.
I turn now more specifically to the United States, were certain kind of issues have become especially important and divisive. One of those was race. From 1865 until 1965 black Americans had sought equal opportunity, and by 1965 they had largely achieved it. At that very same moment, however, a new generation began to argue that that goal was not enough. The problem of poverty in the US was increasingly seen as a racial issue, even though in reality it was not. Race became an increasingly good predictor of voting behavior. Meanwhile, feminism, by emphasizing women's need to support themselves and put their own heeds first, helped turn the individual, rather than the family, into the basic unit of society and politics. The LGBTQ movement has also become more and more radicalized. After beginning as a protest against legal oppression and discrimination that simply wanted gay people to be treated like anyone else, much of it has adopted the idea that gender is simply a social construct, that children must be educated about gay life at an early age, and that heterosexual relations are inherently oppressive. All of these ideas have become conventional wisdom among educated elites but are rejected by poorer and less educated people regardless of their race.
I am not, obviously, a nuclear physicist, but I am constantly reminded of that discipline as I look at my country today. In mid-century very strong forces held our atoms and molecules together and we shaped them into strong institutions at home and abroad. Now a series of chain reactions have broken down the links between men and women, blacks and whites, and traditional and contemporary mores--all the while, like a fission reaction, releasing enormous energy that continues to explode all around us. Those cleavages now divide the Democratic and Republican parties, which until the late 1960s hardly differed on cultural issues at all--and they divide sections of the country more deeply than at any time since Reconstruction.
And all the division may now reach the breaking point thanks to the New York indictment of Donald Trump by DA Alvin Bragg. I have mixed feelings about it. The indictment involves a very novel legal theory, which turns the hush money into an illegal campaign contribution under federal law. As such it's not impossible that it could be thrown out at once. Already nearly the entire Republican Party has sprung to Trump's defense, and Ron DeSantis even announced that Florida would refuse to extradite him, if asked. To the Republicans, apparently this and any other indictment of Trump--including one for interfering in the Georgia election or encouraging September 11--will be nothing but a politicized travesty of justice. And I am sad that the Democratic Party is relying so heavily on the criminal justice system--part of the Deep State, if you will--to deal with their most dangerous political opponent. I also regret that this will become the number one news story for months, far overshadowing the issue of the economic plight of the American people. We won't get out of this mess until we find some task that two-thirds of the country can agree on. This isn't it.
For most of our history the two major parties shared an interest in preserving the legitimacy of the government. So did most of the press. Now these institutions do not share that interest. The Republican Party has been trying to destroy the reputation of the federal government for 40 years. I think that only the elderly now even understand the idea of shared national respect for our government, because we are the only ones to have experienced it. The question is whether our system can survive without it, and I am not at all sure that it can. I also think that the disappearance of any feeling of participation in a great, shared enterprise is contributing enormously to a national mental health crisis, especially among the young.
3 comments:
I anticipated you would address the question in the title.
Strauss and Howe defined the Climax as "a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the new". Unless the rhetorical question's premise is that the "new order" is the full-on arrival of a police state that has confirmed its commitment to quashing all dissent against the progressive globalist agenda of Permanent Washington, we are most definitely not at the Climax right now.
You mentioned the anti-authoritarian turn of academia and the culture in the 1960s. I won't presume what it was like, because you were there and I was not. What I can say confidently, however, is that the NATURE of the anti-authoritarian turn associated with that era, echoes today in attitudes about how "good" and "enlightened" the government and liberal elites of all stripes are, and how "bad", "stupid", "bigoted" and "evil", ALL people who see America and the world differently are. To state it as simply as I can: the anti-authoritarianism associated with the 1960s, has evolved into the authoritarianism of today.
I completed my master's at a major university on the East coast just over a decade ago...not Harvard, but a school most people have heard of. The culture of classes and discussions and books and ideas while I was there, was about as homogeneous as it gets. And grad students were favored in that environment not merely on the basis of their work, but on the basis of their willingness to ALWAYS stay within the boundaries of the approved campus orthodoxy. I produce a YouTube series about Strauss-Howe generational theory now, and I've told all of three people who I knew back then about it. If I told most of my classmates and professors from that time, I would instantly be considered an apostate and treated accordingly.
And as far as the Republican Party "trying to destroy the reputation of the federal government for 40 years", that charge would have legs if there were evidence to support it. The Mitch McConnell's and Lindsey Graham's of the world might fulminate against Democrat administrations, but they sure seem to love being in the DC circle of power. The fact is, in the mid-20th century, the federal government became re-purposed to place power in the hands of people who were, for the most part, totally isolated from the day to day concerns of other Americans. Some of the changes associated with that time were good and necessary; I'm not about to protest otherwise. But to me, it's clear that most of those changes were profoundly destructive in the long term, and the Republican Party became the only obstacle large enough to slow Washington elites' (and their allies in the culture's) march to transform the country exactly as they wished. By the Obama years, DC had become a town hostile to people who had a more traditional outlook about the country. And I know this, because I lived there, and because the university I attended was there.
Prior to 2016, the Washington elite and their allies elsewhere tried bringing about the transformation they wanted, mostly by way of cultural persuasion and incremental policy change. Since 2016, they've done it by force. Donald Trump will one day be gone. But the damage done to the country in the name of the conviction that he is a Luciferian evil, will be lasting.
I recently predicted that based on the pace of events and today's generational constellation, this fourth turning will end sometime around 2031. That timeline might have just accelerated with what happened last week. But we still have a LONG way to go until the Climax. I don't know what kind of country we'll have by then. But if when it's all said done, the Strauss-Howe model isn't at least partially cited in the official explanation? It's by the wrong historian.
I recall the defund the police mania earler as minorities felt persecuted. Now the congress will defund and shut down the FBI, DOJ. Simply put, no one respects the law. Everything is ad hominem. This must stop. Abuse of any power is sociopathic. I think the generational theory had a certain basic moral, religious concept at its root. People learn mutual respect through mutual suffering. America never suffered like in the old world. It seems that before an individual, a class of people realizes actions have life endangering consequences that they will simply continue in one direction. The neocons, CIA and DOD on the global stage provoking the nuclear clawed bear and the Deep State,now left wing liberal of dictatorial variety provoking the middle class. The Civil War is at home starting, swamp draining, abroad the new reserve currency, brics+ formation is WWIII. Both heads of the hydra need killing to maintain America as a democratic republic and end the imperialist dictatorship which slowly emerged from the revolution onwards in slow stages of internal logic of manifest destiny and expanding govt controls. Reverse both. Neurotic behavior can be treated rationally.
As commenter, energyflow, puts it: "Everything is ad hominem."
This was brought home to in the Congressional hearings where Matt Taibbi was questioned or, rather, "questioned" by Democrats and Republicans alike, many of them intent on enacting the RESTRICT Act, which would institute an actual, not a figurative "fascism", empowering a thoroughly authoritarian state.
Professor Kaiser writes as if only Republican politicians are intent on undermining what little remains of the Republic or political integrity. Our political discourse is already "fascist" in that it seems to consist of little more than partisan cheerleading for a division, over "issues" entirely fabricated for the purpose.
"Woke" thinking and "successor ideology" serves no rational purpose or interest but seems to supply a script for rants and slanders all around. "Defund the Police"? really? Letting men compete in women's sports? really?
Few Democrats will even acknowledge that "Russiagate", with its implication that Trump was a traitorous, Manuchurian candidate, was fabricated out of disinformation techniques and bad faith argument and mere pretense of investigation. That was a terrible, shameful episode in American politics and it has not ended even now, with many people's memories distorted. Few Democrats can even remember the scheme of campaign finance law circumvention revealed by the disclosure of DNC emails, only that Russia supposedly stole those emails (an assertion never proven).
Now that the Deep State appears bound and determined to involve the U.S. in war with Russia, China and Iran, "led" by the clearly diminished Biden, and the U.S. economy teeters on the edge after decades of increasing financial corruption and upward income redistritution as well as neglect of national economic interests in favor of profits for billionaire "international investors", one really has to wonder about the integrity of a partisan political system organized around urging every responsible citizen to fear "the other" and to vote for the "lesser evil".
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